AppleMagazine – July 19, 2019

A compensation program for those exposed
to radiation from years of nuclear weapons
testing and uranium mining would be expanded
under legislation that seeks to address fallout
across the western United States, Guam and the
Northern Mariana Islands.
U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan rolled out the measure
Tuesday on the 74th anniversary of the Trinity Test.
As part of the top-secret Manhattan Project,
government scientists and the U.S. military
dropped the first atomic bomb in the New
Mexico desert in 1945. Nearly 200 atmospheric
tests followed. Uranium mining persisted even
after the tests ceased.
Tens of thousands of people — from miners
and truck drivers to those living in communities
near test sites — were exposed to radiation that
has resulted in cancer, birth defects and other
illnesses, said Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat.
He said radiation exposure has
disproportionally affected Native American
communities as well as those who have lived in
the shadow of that first test.